Rory Stewart calls for more investment as the Defence Secretary says he 'hopes'
to keep defence spend at 'around' the current 2 per cent commitment beyond
2015

Britain has “taken its eye off the ball” over the threat of Russia and needs to “recalibrate” the defence effort away from the Middle East and back towards the Cold War, the head of the Defence Committee has said.

Rory Stewart, who has recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Ukraine, said it was “ very striking” that it was only after the airline came down people began to “wake up” to the fact that the key issue at the upcoming Nato summit would have to be Russia.

The latest report from the committee has warned the crisis in Ukraine represents a “game-changer” for Britain’s defence policy and shows that the UK’s Armed Forces must deal not only with terrorists from failed states, but also “focus on the defence of Europe against Russia”.

It warns that Britain and Nato are poorly prepared for the threat of a fully-fledged military attack from its former Cold War adversary.

The risk of a conventional military assault by Russia on a Nato member state remains "low", the MPs conclude, but the prospect of a campaign of unconventional tactics like that used by Vladimir Putin in Ukraine is "more substantial and would be even more difficult to counter".

Mr Stewart told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that the MOD had “hollowed out Britain’s Russian expertise and now needs to improve its ability to understand the country.

He said: “I would say there will have to be more investment because we need to start exercising on a larger scale we need to increase out Russian capacity, we need to put people into cyber warfare communications in Nato.

"Russia is smaller than us, their economy is smaller than us but they are spending almost twice as much as we are on defence.

“I’m afraid for a whole generation its perfectly understandable a whole generation of officers were so keen to refocus away from the Cold War and to focus on Afghanistan and Iraq that they went too far in that direction and I think we now need to recalibrate it.

He added: “We have taken the eye off the ball, we haven’t been concerned particularly for the last ten or 15 years.

"We have been so focused places like Iraq and Afghanistan that we haven’t been prepared for a big state like Russia, a state that has the capacity to shoot down planes at 30,000 feet, the kind of state that can plan cyber-attack – we haven’t been ready for that.”

Despite the renewed threat from Russia, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary refused to make guarantee that the Conservative commitment to 2 per cent of GDP to be spent on Defence beyond the end of this Parliament.

However he put pressure on George Osborne, the chancellor, to maintain spending on the area emphasising that he had "hope" that the spend would be maintained should the Tories secure power after the General Election in May.

Mr Fallon told Today: "Let's be clear - we've committed to 2 per cent this year, committed to 2 per cent next year, that's the end of the spending review period for all the departments and we will have to sort that out next year, when we're re-elected, with other departments.

"But be very clear - that is a target we have endorsed, committed to it at the moment and I certainly hope we're going to keep up at around that level, but it's also important to get the other countries to do more as well - some are even below 1 per cent."